Browser wars: the non-evil empire strikes back

By Sterling “Chip” Camden
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Since we last left our heroes back in July, several new browser versions have been released:  Chrome 3, Opera 10, Lunascape 5.1.5, and incremental updates to Firefox, Safari, and even Internet Explorer 8.  So it’s time for us to revisit our benchmarks.

Dromaeo benchmark

The Dromaeo test suite measures JavaScript performance in computing a variety of algorithms, many of which are common in web applications.  I ran the recommended suite on Google Chrome 3.1.195.21, Mozilla Firefox 3.5.3, Internet Explorer 8.0.6001.18813, Apple Safari 4.0 (531.9.1), Opera 10.00, and Lunascape 5.1.5 (testing each of its three rendering engines).  The test machine is an Intel Centrino Duo 2Ghz with 2GB of RAM running Windows Vista – not top of the line, but pretty typical.

First the raw data.  The winner in each test is colored green, and any runner-up that is within 10% of the winner is colored yellow.  As usual, not all tests could be run on Internet Explorer (or Lunascape with the Trident Engine) due to JavaScript errors – thus, I can provide no permalink to those results on dromaeo.com.

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Next, a new visualization.  Since the individual tests are not comparable in terms of run time, I’ve plotted the results in terms of percentage of the best score, so you can more easily compare the performances in each category.

Legend:

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As you can see, Chrome 3 has regained dominant performance in many categories – winning in 24 of the 49 tests (up from 14 with version 2).  Safari wins in 13 of the tests.  The new version of Lunascape holds its own by winning 4 of the tests when using WebKit, and 7 when using Gecko (stealing every win from Firefox).  Opera 10 takes one important test (DOM Traversal) away from Safari, winning a category for the first time ever.  Opera 10 is now faster than Internet Explorer in all but three tests, though it still lags far behind the other browsers in most categories.  Internet Explorer is, well, it’s Internet Explorer – what do you expect?

Peacekeeper Benchmark

The Peacekeeper benchmark, which also tests rendering speed, gave the following results:

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I was unable to run the Lunascape:Trident test on the same system, apparently because I couldn’t figure out how to clear the correct cookie.

In Peacekeeper’s overall score, Safari edges out Chrome overall.  Drilling down to details, it appears that Safari’s main strength lies in data manipulation, while Chrome wins easily on complex graphics.  Which one better serves the future of web apps?  It’s interesting that Lunascape with the WebKit engine scored so much lower on this test than either Chrome or Safari, when it ran comparably to both of them in most of the Dromaeo tests.

Acid3 test

Standards compatibility has always been bothersome for Internet Explorer, as the lack of results from some of the Dromaeo tests above still shows.  But there’s another test specifically designed to gauge compatibility with web standards:  the Acid3 test, which can be run here.  These were my results for each of the above-named browsers:

Chrome:  100%

Firefox:  93%

Internet Explorer:  20%, and “LINKTEST FAILED”

Safari:  100%

Opera:  100%

Lunascape WebKit:  100%, but “LINKTEST FAILED”

Lunascape Gecko:  93%

Lunascape Trident:  13%, and “LINKTEST FAILED”

It looks like WebKit (Chrome, Safari) and Opera have these standards nailed.  Gecko (Firefox) still needs work, and Trident (Internet Explorer) doesn’t seem to be trying very hard.

Conclusions

Of course, there’s a lot I didn’t test:  load time for the browser, page load speed, and memory footprint all come to mind.

What do these results tell you about your choice of browser?  Personally, I’m still quite happy with Chrome – but it’s good to see healthy competition in this space.

GPS

Sometimes it’s good to have some low-tech skills, like reading a map. Or asking for directions. The last time I was in New York City, I found getting to places to which I’d never been quite simple. All I had to do was ask whoever I was with to direct me to my next destination, and they invariably pulled out their iPhone and looked it up for me! This video is another gem from Sheepfilms.

[via b3ta]


Google Books offers bizarre new media: the printed page

Every so often you’ll see a print-on-demand machine which is billed as changing the way publishing works. The dream is to be able to walk into a bookstore and quickly print off a copy of any book you like rather than be limited by what is currently in stock on the shelves.

That’s likely still some time off, but it’s a step closer thanks to a deal struck between one manufacturer and Google. The search giant has supplied On Demand Books with two million titles (PDF) from its digital books catalog, those being the titles which are no longer in copyright. (While the text itself is in the public domain, Google owns the rights to the scanned copies produced by its system, which is how it’s able to make such a deal.)

The agreement means that books will be available at a price set by the venue housing the printing machine, with a recommended price of $8 for the out-of-copyright titles. They’ll then pay a $1 royalty to New World Books, and $1 to Google (which will donate the cash to charities and non-profit groups.)

However, the machines are hardly ubiquitous: even after a planned expansion next year, there will only be 34 around the world. That’s largely because they cost $100,000 each, though a leasing program is available.

The catalog provided by Google could be expanding rapidly in the next few weeks. That’s because it’s awaiting court approval on a settlement with authors groups which would give it the rights to reproduce so-called “orphan books” which are in copyright but where the publisher and author either can’t be identified or traced. That proposal is proving controversial with critics arguing that it would amount to non-government groups rewriting copyright law.

The machines, dubbed Espresso Book Machines, already offer some copyrighted titles, plus the ability to print PDF files in book form.

By the way, if anyone from On Demand Books is reading, can we suggest your sales staff get in touch with Cushing Academy, the prep school we recently featured when it decided to switch to an all-electronic library?

Opera Strives for a Bigger Chuck of the American Market

By Natania Barron
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

We hear a lot about Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. And of course, there’s been recent buzz about Google’s Chrome. But few Americans outside web design and IT have ever heard about Opera, a browser that is far more popular globally than you might expect. In fact, Opera 10 released last week with over 10 million downloads.

And according to a recent BBC article, even Chrome has surpassed Opera in the US, after being on the market for little less than a year (some fun stats here). From the article:

In terms of pure numbers… Opera has 40 million users on desktops, 30 million on mobile phones and the rest on other devices like Nintendo Wii and DS gaming systems.

The article goes on to speculate that Americans, who are rather accustomed to the glitz and glamor of marketing, just haven’t gotten the message about Opera. But apparently it’s been around since 1994, which is practically ancient in internet years, and has survived where browsers like Netscape have not (or at least not directly.) I can’t recall ever seeing Opera advertised anywhere, so maybe that is part of it. Still, Firefox and Google aren’t huge direct advertisers, either.

I know I’m personally attached to Firefox, and the only time I used Opera–over a year ago–was to see if I could get it to mimic an older version of Internet Explorer to get around a particular site’s requirements (being a Mac user occasionally has its downsides… but if the downside is not being able to use IE, I’m okay with that). While I didn’t mind the browser, it certainly didn’t strike me as any more powerful or sleek as Firefox. I wasn’t blown away by it, but I wasn’t turned off either. It worked, it was pretty; still, I went back to Firefox.

But yet, clearly, millions of users around the world prefer Opera, so maybe I’m the one missing something.

Any Opera users out there who’d like to weigh in? Should I give Opera another chance?

Computer Science Lecture Rap

So the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has this Geek of the Week feature, which mostly seems to be interviews with random techies, but they did uncover this guy:

A computer science lecturer at the University of Washington, livening up his classroom by busting some rhymes about the joys and perils of Java. Featuring some straight-up gangsta lyrics like:

“You haters are crying ’cause you just can’t cope
My methods are red, man, yours are outside the scope!”

Hey, kudos for making an effort. I’m reminded of some of my college professors who tried to be cool, though usually they didn’t get much farther than the stray New Yorker cartoon in a powerpoint slide. Though on the other hand, if you’re going to have music in a lecture hall, you may as well go all out.

Google CAPTCHAs another internet tool

If you thought Google couldn’t possibly take control of every aspect of the internet, you were wrong.

If you’ve ever tried to sign up to a website or post a comment, and been asked to type in a word or numbers that appear in a picture – or worse, try to figure out the difference between a virtually indistinguishable cat and dog – you’ve encountered a CAPTCHA.

Technically standing for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (though that was simply made up afterwards for the sake of the pun), it’s designed to make it impossible, or at least troublesome, for a computer to automatically figure out the correct answer to the barely readable text and thus prevent automated systems of leaving spam on websites.

Google has now bought out RECAPTCHA, the biggest firm producing such tools, having found a creative use for the firm’s technology. Many of the images used as CAPTCHAs are taken from scans of newspapers and books which are legible but have faded too much for tradition optical character recognition (thus making it difficult for spammers to create programs which can read and “solve” them.)

However RECAPTCHA has now wound up with a massive database of both the images and the words they represent. Google believes that database could be the key to improving its own scanning software so that it can do a better job of scanning text that is in poor condition.

As well as scanning pages for its controversial Google Books scheme, the company will also use the technology for scanning older newspapers for inclusion in the archive section of Google News.

Of course, once Google’s system perfects the art of reading such text, the firm will have to keep the scanning technology under tight control to avoid spammers using the solution to make CAPTCHAs worthless.

There may be unintended legal consequences of the purchase. There are arguments that using a CAPTCHA on a website without providing an audio version of the test can breach various national laws on disability discrimination. While RECAPTCHA avoided major legal problems, the technology being owned by a giant such as Google may increase the likelihood of a civil action.

(EDIT: Thanks to reader Luke Faraone for alerting us that, unlike some firms, RECAPTCHA “supplies an audio version of their captcha by default in their widget.”)